Chapter Twelve #2
He kissed her, his hands moving down over her midsection, moving up to cup her breast. He kissed her, like he was dying. Like there was nothing else in the world he wanted.
And she kissed him back, because there wasn’t anything else she wanted.
She was every inch that girl who had come to him that first night, except this time she knew what it could cost her to push him too far. This time she knew what she was risking, and here she was, kissing him anyway.
It was legendary, and terrifying. She had never been so brave.
She tightened her hold on him, surrendering herself to the violent need inside of her.
He growled, kissing a line down her neck, down her collarbone, to her shoulder, where he nipped her.
“I need to see you,” he said.
He pulled her bikini top away, exposing her breasts to his hungry gaze.
It was barely any covering, and she found herself foolishly bashful. They’d had sex. Of course, it had been under cover of darkness, and it hadn’t felt quite so…
It felt risky now. In a way that it hadn’t before.
It was the knowledge that she carried with her of what it meant to fall out of favor with him.
What it meant to risk her heart.
Make no mistake, she was doing that. She could pretend that it was all attraction. That what she wanted was his body. She did.
But it was more than that, and it always had been.
He held her face for a moment, his hand cupping her chin. “I’m the only man you’ve ever been with?”
She nodded slowly. “Yes.” Her voice trembled.
“I was very rough with you that night.”
She shook her head. “No. You were perfect. It was perfect. I don’t need or want you to apologize for anything that happened.”
He nodded, then moved his hand down to cup her breast, his thumb sliding over one tightened bud there.
“You are a revelation. You were even then. It had been so long since I’d touched anyone.”
“Is that the only reason?”
He shook his head. “No. It was something else. It was something else for me. I felt drawn to you, in a way that I’d never felt drawn to another person.
” He paused for a moment, and it was like he was drawing the next words from deep inside himself.
Like they were difficult to make himself say.
“I’m not the kind of man who has one-night stands, you know. ”
“You’re not?”
He shook his head. “No. I never cheated on my wife, even though we weren’t intimate at the end of our marriage.
I’ve always done the right thing. I’ve never let my body or my head run away with me.
But with you I did. With you, I have no resistance.
I wanted to claim that it was the moment, but I didn’t want anyone else either.
It’s the reason I had to have the ball. I had to find you. ”
They were both victims of their expectations, she supposed. He had imagined her to be someone that she wasn’t, and he hadn’t been able to get over the disappointment when she proved it to be just Birdie.
Or maybe it was what she had imagined earlier. Maybe the biggest problem was that he hadn’t actually wanted emotion this big. And so at the first possible opportunity, he had rejected it. She couldn’t say that she blamed him.
He kissed her collarbone, down to her sternum, right between her breasts, then knelt down in front of her, holding her hips, looking up and kissing her stomach, before taking her bikini bottoms down and exposing her to his hungry gaze.
“You are beautiful,” he said, the words hard, strained.
“I’ve never felt like this before. I’ve never felt so out of control for a woman.
For anyone. For anything. I’ve never been able to be.
” She wanted to talk, but she also didn’t.
Because her body was throbbing with need, and she just needed him.
He leaned in, sliding his tongue over her sensitive flesh, licking her right where she desired him most.
He ate her like he was a starving man, and she gripped his hair, trying to brace herself in the deep, shifting sand as he pleasured her.
Oh, the things that he did to her. The things that she was willing to risk for him. It was a private island; having sex outside wasn’t a risk. That’s not what it was.
But her heart.
He looked up at her, as he continued to eat her, and the look in his eyes sent her over the edge. She cried out his name, digging her fingernails into his shoulders as she fought to keep standing.
Then as she melted, he grabbed her body, braced against his, and laid her down on the picnic blanket they had brought with them. With haste, he took off his swim trunks, and she wiggled beneath him, aching to get a look at his body, which she had been denied that night in the study.
“What?” he asked.
“I want to see you naked,” she said.
He looked stunned, like she had hit him upside the head with a brick. “Oh.”
“You’re beautiful,” she said, wrapping her hand around his throbbing manhood, looking at him as she slid her thumb over that hot, smooth skin.
“It’s been a very long time since…” He closed his eyes.
He was wounded. He was wounded just like she was. In different ways, with different kinds of weapons, but she could see in the way that he responded to being called beautiful, that he hadn’t felt desired in a very long time.
That part of this was that he simply hadn’t been able to believe that she had strong enough feelings for him to be with him for the simple reason that she wanted to.
That she cared.
“Take me,” she whispered against his mouth.
He growled, positioning himself between her thighs and thrusting inside of her. She gasped, arching up against him, as he took her over and over again.
Desire built deep inside her body, and when she came, she pulsed around him, squeezing him tight, pushing him over the edge too. He growled, his forehead pressed against hers as he shuddered out his orgasm, as he spilled himself inside of her.
She clung to his shoulders, out there in the burning bright sun, replete. Satisfied, and yet also terrified.
“We can’t pretend that this isn’t part of us,” she said.
“I…”
“We can’t,” she said.
He rolled away from her, and sat up. Then he nodded slowly. “I want you,” she said, touching his shoulder. “Don’t you see?”
“Yes,” he responded.
He turned to her, pressing his thumb against her lower lip.
His eyes blazed into hers, his voice gruff, strained.
“I want you too. In ways that astonish me. Even before my marriage, I knew that I couldn’t afford to carry out love affairs.
I was very discreet whenever I did. I have never been undone like this.
Not ever. I need you to know that. I need you to know it isn’t simply because I was celibate for as long as I was. ”
It healed something in her to hear that.
“Well, I’m not a virgin because I’ve never had the opportunity. Well, I’m not a virgin anymore,” she said, putting her hand on her stomach and rolling to her side. “What I mean is, there was no one who tempted me. Whatever you believe, it isn’t because you were a king. You were off-limits.”
“Women have tried to seduce me before. Even when I was married.”
“And I didn’t,” she said.
He shook his head. “No. You didn’t. You just talked to me.”
“It made me happy to see you every day. I was okay with that. Just seeing you. Being near you. It gave me something that I didn’t have anywhere else. It’s an extremely embarrassing thing to admit.”
Admitting that she’d had a crush on her husband was so lowering. But then, he seemed to need to hear it, and that helped soothe some of the sting.
“It’s rebuilding something inside of me,” he said, reaching out and touching her face. “Which I suppose is wholly unfair given everything that I put you through. Given that I’m a king, and you…”
“I’m lowly? I am a worm?”
“You are not. You’re extraordinary. I treated you very badly.
I’m genuinely very sorry about it. It was foolish of me.
It was cowardice. You’re right. I had feelings about my own behavior and I took it out on you.
You’re also right that I was the one who made up an entire story that caused all of this strife.
” He paused for a moment. “All this time, I thought that being too soft, letting people in, that was the only way that I could cause damage. But this… I hurt you.”
She realized that it wasn’t so much shock that he’d hurt her that he was dealing with now, but that he cared about it. She wondered how long it had been since he’d had to take another person’s emotions into account.
“I will do my best not to hurt you again,” he said.
“Well, I don’t know that you should try to make that promise. Because we will be married for a very long time. At least, that’s the goal. And I have a feeling you and I have yet to say all the things that we have to say to each other.”
“That’s very pragmatic.”
“I’m not actually very pragmatic. At least, I think I don’t want to be. That isn’t quite my goal. I would love to dream.”
“What if I told you that you could? That I care about your dreams?”
“Why? Because you enjoy having sex with me?”
“Because I’m fascinated by you.” He closed his eyes. “When I’m not trying to crush you beneath the weight of my royal rage. You’re astonishing, do you know that? You know how few people would have tried to comfort me with any sort of genuine measure?”
“Given that I was the only one in the study, and the only one that you had sex with that night, I suppose the answer is very few people.”
“I’m being quite serious. My circle is very small. I had hoped that my wife and I… Circe and I… When I married her I had hoped that we would find at least companionship.”
“You didn’t.”
“I didn’t. And I don’t know how much of that was my fault.”
“I don’t want you to care about me simply because you regret your first marriage.”
Maybe that wasn’t fair. Maybe it was the hot sun talking. Maybe it was her being grumpy and pregnant and jealous and needy. Greedy for parts of him that no one else had ever had.
“No, that’s not why. I want to know more about you. I want to understand…this.”
“It’s called attraction, I believe. I was a virgin until six months ago, and even I know that.”
“No. It’s something more.”
Her heart lifted in her chest, and she had to smack it back down. Because she had to stop getting excited just because he said something that verged on kind.
He was a man, and likely, he was mainly responding to the intensity of the sex between them. It might even be what she was responding to.
Everything was all mixed up. She had a crush on him before she knew him, and now there was this, and everything was just difficult.
Everything was hard to decode. So she didn’t want to.
She wanted to recommit to this idea that she wouldn’t protect herself.
That she would let herself feel all of her feelings.
Every single one of them.
“While we’re here,” he said. “Let’s be like this.”
While we’re here.
“I think you’ll find, Your Highness, that we have difficulty keeping our hands off of each other at the palace too.”
“But there I’m a king.”
He was hiding behind that. Using it as a shield. She couldn’t blame him. She wished that she had something to use as a shield.
All she had was this intense, overflowing emotion inside of her chest.
All she had was that same feeling she’d had for him all this time.
“Well, Your Highness. Then let us give you a good vacation from your status.”